Most weight loss programs will rely on one fundamental aspect to help their clients lose weight: the fact that if you cut calories taken in, and increase calorie burning, you will lose weight.

This is absolutely true, but as a patient of ours, the program you have started on rarely takes this into account (at first). Our program is different in that we recognize:

The reasons why one patient has difficulty losing weight is always unique to their medical condition.

We have never seen a piece of “belly fat” walk into the clinic for treatment, and thus it makes no sense whatsoever to treat the fat without looking at the whole.

Thus, we do not generically recommend a diet such as the Atkin’s diet, or the South Beach Diet, or even the Pritikin Diet, nor do we use a specific set of supplements meant to control appetite. The human body is far too individualized for such generic treatments.

Phase I of the Program is really an individualized assessment of your overall health, symptoms, and complaints. This is usually occurring over 4-6 weeks. This is when we investigate any underlying reasons for your difficulty in losing weight. Thus, we may have examined your knees, and starting homeopathic injections, acupuncture, and herbal medicines if painful arthritic knees prevented you from exercising and were making you self-medicating with junk food. We may have started you on ozone therapy if fatigue was a symptom, or if we found you had metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance) or diabetes. We may have investigated and started balancing of your hormones, if this was the cause. Allergies, including to food, may be investigated as they can cause weight gain as well. During this period, your health improves, symptoms improve, and usually your weight improves even though we may not have addressed diet and exercise yet.

Phase II of the Program involves a specific diet, with individualized ratios of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that is suitable for your metabolic type. This is usually tested through blood-work. Exercise is also modified at this stage, since you will be feeling more fit and energetic.Far-infrared Sauna therapy may be started at this point to increase excretion of fat-soluble toxins, and to increase blood flow to fat tissue. This phase length generally depends on how much weight, or more accurately, how far the body composition has to change in order to achieve good health.

Phase III of the Program is largely self-directed, but is aimed at maintaining your health and ideal weight, so that you do not fall back towards declining health and increasing weight. Usually at this stage, we are not focused on weight loss, diet, or exercise, as now we direct you to use diet and exercise as part of an overall healthy lifestyle. We may be interested in identifying any underlying causes to the conditions found in Phase I. For example, chronic fatigue with difficulty concentrating may be caused by elevated mercury in one patient, or inadequate adaptation to stress in another. Addressing underlying causes prevents relapse. We use a variety of herbal, nutritional and homeopathic medicines that are specific for your individual case, as investigated in Phase I. During this part of the program, you will find that you feel much more energetic, healthier, and recover from any acute illnesses very quickly (though you get ill much less frequently as well). In fact, commonly patients will say that while they thought they were “healthy” when they started, the difference is night and day.

Any intravenous or invasive procedure carries risks. Many chronic conditions, including those with unclear singular or multifactorial causes, are controversial in both diagnosis and treatment standards. Be sure to seek qualified second opinions. Your family MD is a good choice, as are “Functional Medicine” MDs. Other ND’s are excellent as opinions and therapeutics vary.

The opinions expressed on these pages is representative of our professional experience and opinion. These may differ from what is considered standard or usual care.